The circumstances that brought it about were clear enough. It had been a horrible day, wet, and with a cold wind. Grace—he had seen her full name written on a sheet of her music—did not appear till about ten minutes before the hour at which Georgie usually shut up shop. The door at the end of the passage was open, and the fire which he had stoked up for himself could have been seen by a customer turning in to the shop door. Grace was wet, her mackintosh sleek as a seal’s hide. Georgie exclaimed at it, and she confided that her feet were soaking and cold as frogs. Did he invite her straight away to dry them at the sitting-room fire, or did she somehow put the words into his mouth? Whichever way it was, inside five minutes he had drawn the shop shutters and gone in to find her sitting in one of Aunt Butters’ great chairs, with her bare slender legs stretched out and the firelight gleaming on her shins.
She made a move to draw her skirt below her knees as Georgie came in, but not before he had had a good chance to see them. He felt a sudden tension in his throat. For a moment neither said a word. Then she turned her head, and asked him if he had a small basin.
Georgie started and stared.
“A basin? Yes, I think so. How big?”
“Only a small one. I want to wring out the ends of my skirt. The rain’s blown up under my mac.”
Georgie hurried off, his mind in turmoil, and brought her a small basin. He remained in the background, modestly looking away as she squeezed the sodden skirt and the drops tinkled into the basin.
“I’ll take your mac and rub it down. I say,” he added, “the rain’s come through.”
“Oh yes. It does, if it’s at all heavy.”
Georgie stood, dismayed. “But—I mean—your jacket. Isn’t it wet, too?”
“Oh yes.”
“Oughtn’t you to—I mean…” Enormities flamed like Catherine-wheels before him. “Couldn’t we—if I brought you my dressing gown—or my overcoat—wouldn’t it be better to dry it?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t trouble you. But—it would be nice.”
So, after an orgy of propriety, with Georgie busy, crimson faced, over some imaginary duty in the shop, they were sitting side by side in the firelight, Grace enveloped in his overcoat, and a dark shape of clothes, drying on the back of a chair, which Georgie resolutely refused to look at.
Then, by degrees, peace seemed to descend on them. Grace, tired from her day and lulled to a half-drowsy state by the warmth and the firelight, relaxed and began to talk dreamily of her life and what she would like by way of change in it. She spoke more to herself than to Georgie. It was as if she had forgotten him. Looking back on it long afterwards, with every reason to suspect her, he could never doubt that on that first occasion she was speaking honestly, without intention. And when, presently, she fell silent, they were, not close together, for neither understood the other, but at accord: their mood part of the firelight and the quiet friendly murmur of the fire. After minutes of silence, Georgie with infinite caution turned his head and looked at her. She was staring at the mantelpiece, seeing nothing of it, her profile sharp, but its habitual watchfulness softened by a look that was half sadness, half content. She seemed, not defenceless, but for the moment undefended. The pathos of the waif was absorbed into a broader melancholy, the commonplace lines made gentle, almost ennobled. At some stage, unnoticed by Georgie, she had shaken loose her wet hair; the firelight hid its lankness and turned it into a small flickering cascade. And Georgie, sitting in this silent harmony, hardly breathing lest he disturb it, felt a deeper stir at his heart. He felt his own loneliness, he understood how good it might be to have always at his side another, a tall slender being stretched out in the firelight at the end of the day, breathing quietly, her soft hair loose upon her shoulder.
But only for a moment. It was a pang, a dream suggested by Grace’s presence. She was not its fulfilment. His wiser self knew that, although he fought it: and, to confirm the knowledge, Grace woke to her true self. Sitting up suddenly, she pulled the coat around her, looked reproachfully at Georgie, and said that it was late, and she must go.
Georgie winced as from a splash of cold water.
“But why? It’s so cosy. And your things won’t be dry yet.”
“Can’t help that,” she replied. “People will talk.”
To that Georgie made no reply. He left her alone to put on her things, then miserably saw her to the door. She was distant now, as if he had committed some crime against her. Bewildered, made to feel guilty but with no idea of how he could have offended, Georgie came back from the front door to a fire from which all the warmth seemed to have gone, and spent a wretched evening.
But Grace bore no grudge. Her visits did not cease. She seemed to have a great deal of leisure in the evenings. Within a couple of months of her first visit, she was in at the end of every working day, except for the rare occasions when she had to play in the orchestra. Sitting behind his counter, with his full assent (which he had no recollection of giving), her glasses on, a frown between her brows, and her thin lips pursed tight, she competently totted up and checked one against the other his daybook and ledger. She exclaimed in irritation at the weight of the huge old books, leather bound, and wanted to know why he must use such old-fashioned things. Georgie turned his head aside, and grinned. Miss Butters must have got them at the auction of some big firm’s effects; he knew that they would more than last his time.
Her concern for his accounts was the first thing that amused him about Grace. In all other respects any girl was a mystery to him. Here she was stepping on his own ground. He was, as we have seen, perfectly capable of keeping his own books; but his turnover now nearly trebled Aunt Butters’, and as he had to run the whole business himself, he had got in the way of making provisional entries only and totting up and straightening the books properly at the weekend.
Grace disapproved of this, and got down to the job with an eager concentration which, in spite of his amusement, Georgie found most flattering. She made a great fuss of such few small errors as she found in the books, and used them to disparage Georgie’s aptitude for commerce. The inference always was that he needed someone like her to look after his affairs. Then she took to lugging the books into the little living-room, and sitting with them over the fire, even when Georgie, slightly dazed by this extension of her first entry there, was still serving in the shop. She made herself at home. Her interest began to extend beyond the books. She recommended purchases. She advised him that a certain line of goods could be got cheaper from a different wholesaler. She gave him a dressing down one evening, after a conversation she had overheard through the partly open door, about being too soft in giving credit. But Georgie, though he listened and answered her with courtesy, was surprisingly firm about this, and Grace, realizing perhaps that she had gone too far, was obliged to retreat.
“After all,” she said, giving him her sweet, damaged smile, “it’s your business.”
“Yes,” Georgie replied innocently. “That’s what I thought.”
But he said it so gently, and felt so contrite afterwards, that the danger point was passed. After all, he told himself when she had gone, she was only saying it for his good, to safeguard his interests.
This setback, if such it was, did not deter Grace. The afternoon soon came when Georgie sat down in his own room to tea and buttered toast which he had not prepared. Grace knew where everything was kept, and had added a sugar bowl of her own to the household utensils. After three months, pink curtains hid the windows, blotting out the little garden, and there was a new rug in front of the fire, for which Georgie had paid two pounds three and sixpence.
One change, however, Georgie had made on his own: he had not wholly lost his senses. From whatever motives, he had decided not to let Grace into the secret concealed by the so-called sofa. At an early stage of her penetration into the living-room, before she took to coming in every day, he had removed the four heavy tea chests.
This task, which he did not feel disposed to confide to anyone, took him hou
rs and cost him much sweat and exhaustion. Using levers and a pair of wheels, he managed to shift the chests one by one to a kind of cellar-cum-cup-board under the stairs. Miss Butters had used it to stack empty cartons, packing cases, and the like. The cellar was deep: Georgie shoved his tea chests to the very back, the darkest part, where the roof came low, and hid them behind a barrier of empties. Next day he went out, bought an old horsehair sofa at a junk shop, had it delivered and put in place, covered it with the same loud chintz, and waited in some anxiety, hoping for the best
Grace glanced sharply at the substitute sofa, next time she came in, and Georgie was terrified she was going to to make some remark. She could see it all right, for she wore her glasses in front of him now. Probably, if she noticed anything at all, she simply concluded that she had not got a really good sight of the sofa before. At any rate, she said nothing: and she never found out about the tea.
It was one of the very few things she did not find out. Looking back on it all afterwards, Georgie could never fix on any definite stage, any really crucial landmark, until too late. Grace was more and more about the place. Having her there regularly had caused most of Georgie’s curiosity about her to abate. She hinted at a sad upbringing, but was remarkably reticent about its details. Without committing herself in any way about her parentage or suggesting anything so unladylike as illegitimacy, she let it be inferred that she was of high-class origin. She lived, Georgie discovered, exiguously enough, on twenty-five shillings a week. There was nothing wrong with her appetite, as manifested at supper in Georgie’s sitting-room. But she was company for him, her interest in his welfare was touching to a boy in whose welfare no one of his own age had hitherto shown concern: and if, after a while, he conceived a suspicion that her interest was focused more strongly on the shop than on himself, Georgie dismissed it as unworthy. He was still undisillusioned, gentle, and forbearing. On the whole, he was glad to see Grace make herself at home.
She did that all right. Shop or no, Georgie could not say that she took no personal interest in him. As for his interest in her, it was kept alive by a variety of traits, some unexpected. Returning one evening from the shop, he noticed at once that one of the steel engravings was gone from the wall. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what had happened. Then he saw that Grace was sitting in a carefully composed attitude, which, little though he knew of such things, managed to convey to him exactly what she intended; that is, that maidenly susceptibilities were affronted, and the victim was too much of a lady to mention the fact. A further glance revealed the picture on the floor in a corner, with its face to the wall.
Georgie’s small talk was much inhibited during the meal, by his efforts to recollect which picture it was, and his wonderment as to why Grace objected to it.
“In a brown study?”
He came to with a jerk, to see her looking at him archly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I passed the remark, are you in a brown study?”
The phrase was new to Georgie, and his bewilderment embarrassed and irritated Grace. Never an imaginative girl, she thought he was being purposely obtuse, and her manner became pinched and huffy. Then, having made her effect, she relented and told him a long story about the stupidity of certain children at the convent school where she had been teaching that afternoon, and the unreasonable attitude of one of the nuns.
As soon as he had seen her out, Georgie hurried back, picked up the dethroned picture, and bore it to the light. It showed a scene in the Garden of Eden, with an Eve of Rubens-like proportions, simpering at a heraldic serpent.
Georgie experienced a dull sense of shock, which left him feeling slightly sick. He would never have thought twice about the picture but for Grace’s action. The notion that she looked at it in that way, and wished him to know, seemed to open an unknown trap-door under his feet. This was a side of life with which Georgie had had nothing at all to do. After anxiously scanning the others for possible offence, he put the picture away in a cupboard.
Two days later Grace turned up with a substitute under her arm, loosely wrapped in brown paper. It turned out to be a cheap reproduction of Lord Leighton’s “Wedded”, in which a young gentleman classically clad stood meditatively gnawing the fore-finger of a lavishly draped young lady. The archness, the sidelong glances, the wrigglings with which Grace hung this in place of the other caused Georgie much disquiet. She even managed a faint blush.
“So much nicer, don’t you think?” she said. “So beautiful. And refined.”
Wisely, however, she did not follow up this line, but devoted herself to suggesting improvements and economies in the shop. These Georgie at once admitted to be sound in principle: and when two or three weeks’ practice had shown that they worked, he turned to Grace in a glow of real gratitude.
She reacted by saying how nice it would be if he would come one Sunday morning with her to chapel. Georgie had nothing against that. Such religion as was inculcated at the Orphanage had not inspired him, but he had a naturally respectful nature, and there was much in him that would respond to a mystical appeal. He still said his prayers, albeit in a rather mechanical way, and as a sort of insurance against misfortune: but his confidence in their efficacy had been badly shaken by the Burngullow episode.
Accordingly he put up no resistance, and let himself be piloted to a small chapel of corrugated iron with a seating capacity of about fifty, an old harmonium out of which came more dust than Handel, a thin tow-headed pastor with some form of pulmonary trouble which seemed to be especially aggravated by the Epistle to the Ephesians, and a congregation varying in number between eighteen and twenty-six, most of them apparently in mourning. The repertoire of hymns was narrow; favourites recurred very often. In after years Georgie could only remember two: Throw Out the Lifeline and Hold the Fort. These hymns, stirring in their message but lugubriously performed, gave the worshippers a sense of vicarious strength and action. What particular brand of Christianity he was practising, Georgie never knew. He went through the services in a kind of dream. Expecting little of them, he was not disappointed.
The Reverend Sylvester Tuckett shared in the mournful-ness of the services; was perhaps the cause of it. At first glance he was not unlike Uncle Eddie. Georgie hated himself for noting the resemblance, and was at pains to stress the points of difference. There was the same tall shambling figure, the same long face, the same high spot of colour in the cheeks: but where everything about Eddie was full of vitality, the Reverend Sylvester Tuckett drooped. All his lines ran downwards. His face looked fuller than Eddie’s, since he was heavily undershot, as if all the contents of his cheeks had melted and solidified again in his jowl. And—in this he was quite unlike Uncle Eddie—despite the depressed appearance of his person and his clothes, he wore black gloves and affected a strange prim feminine precision in his hands. He wore narrow shoes, and carried an umbrella, even at midsummer.
The prayers which he put up during the service were servile and gloomy. While grovelling, he seemed to have very little belief in God’s ability to help him or the congregation. When stuck for a phrase he drew heavily on the Book of Common Prayer, inserting a word or two here, and leaving a few out there, in such a way as to assert his particular degree of nonconformity and ruin the rhythm of the original.
His sermons, while equally sedative, had more character, chiefly because of a dialectical formula which was all his own. This consisted of putting two sides of a question in such a way that neither mattered, and clinching the performance with “Yes” and “No”.
“St Paul,” Pastor Tuckett would inform his flock, “was a good man. YES. But he was not perfect NO. But THEN….”
Georgie once went so far as to imitate that formula when he got home, and was rebuked by Grace for lack of breeding. Georgie could get very little out of these services, and in the argument that followed his lapse of taste, he told Grace so. Worried, or pretending to be, she arranged for a private meeting between him and the pastor. It took place in the v
estry, a room at once stuffy and cold, smelling strongly of floor polish and faintly of mothballs. The Reverend Sylvester Tuckett looked at Georgie with eyes like those of a haddock four days dead. He seemed at a loss what to say. Georgie, willing as ever, smiled at him and waited.
“Have you faith?” Mr Tuckett asked at last.
Georgie honestly didn’t know. He ran his mind back over the religious teaching he had received, and found it on a par with other information about the compilation of various gases, and the geography of India: something remote, with no recognizable bearing on his own life, which he was nevertheless prepared to take on trust.
He explained this as well as he was able. Mr Tuckett looked with lustreless eyes at a patch on the rug. He did not seem to be provided with a reply.
“Would you like me to pray with you?” he asked at length.
Georgie said it would be very kind of him, and knelt down on the hard floor, genuinely prepared to receive any revelation that might be given. But the prayer, spiritless, uttered in tones of melancholy dubiety, failed to kindle his spirit. At its end he rose politely, conscious that his knees were sore. He and Mr Tuckett stood opposite one another for a few seconds in silence. Then the pastor cleared his throat, led the way to the door, shook hands, and said goodbye.
It was strange, Georgie reflected as he went away. The hand that should have been moist and flabby was slender, white, and well kept as a woman’s.
He had nothing to report to Grace on his return: but, since it was plain that it pleased her to have him beside her of a Sunday, he continued to go to the services, and to await goodhumouredly for a revelation he now regarded as unlikely.
One conflict she raised in his mind, however, and it bothered him a lot. He discovered that he wished strongly to hide her visits from Uncle Eddie. Why, he could not exactly have explained. So much in him at this stage of his life was subterranean, a set of impulses and shrinkings, most of them unpredictable, which he felt but did not understand. He knew clearly however that he did not want Grace and Eddie to meet. He suspected that Eddie would disapprove, and dreaded the words in which the disapproval would be voiced. Unsure of himself and of the whole relationship, telling himself with justice that they had done nothing wrong, he shivered at the bare idea of Eddie finding Grace in the sitting-room.
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